


the unfortunate effects of progress

by eyemoji



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: ASOUE AU, look away, tags will be updated as story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-13 13:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14113584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyemoji/pseuds/eyemoji
Summary: If you are interested in happy endings, you would be better off reading some other story.The story I am about to tell you is not pleasant in the slightest. It does not have a happy ending; it barely has a happy beginning; and happy instances in between are few and far between. This is because not many happy things happened in the lives of the three children who called themselves ‘The Hephaestus Crew.’Long story short? Look away.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> _To [REDACTED]-- darling, dearest,_ dead.

If you are interested in happy endings, you would be better off reading some other story.

 

The story I am about to tell you is not pleasant in the slightest. It does not have a happy ending; it barely has a happy beginning; and happy instances in between are few and far between. This is because not many happy things happened in the lives of the three children who called themselves ‘The Hephaestus Crew.’ Renee, Hera, and Douglas were intelligent, and resourceful, and could at times, if they wanted, be charming, but they were also very, very, _very_ unlucky, and because of this most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair.

 

It is my duty at this point to offer you a way out. Close this tab. Exit this browser. Put down your electronic device and go do something an infinite number of times more pleasant, such as going for a nice walk on solid ground, or cleaning your room. Some of you might be wondering if this is a ploy to keep valuable secrets from falling into the hands-- or the screens-- of those who should not possess them. You might think, therefore, that everything I am telling you about the severity of the misfortune these three children have gone through is a mere smokescreen, a distraction. Do not delude yourself. Where there is smoke, there is fire, and fire in this case means ‘a particularly valuable tool which you could use to set the device you are reading this on ablaze, rendering the pixels containing the unnecessarily dismal details of the Hephaestus Crew’s fate utterly useless and unable to to ruin the rest your day, or your week, or, indeed, your life.'

 

Long story short? Look away.

 

If you are stubborn enough to ignore my multiple warnings, then I can tell you that Renee, Hera, and Douglas’ unfortunate story began not, as you might for some reason expect, on an isolated, dismal beach under a gloomy grey sky among sharp pebbles and a creaky old pier, but instead on an isolated, dismal _bench_ under a gloomy grey sky, among sharp pebbles. These sort of editorial mistakes tend to happen with the current lifestyle I lead, and I apologize in advance for any other delusions, a word which here means ‘incorrect guesses as to the advancement of this plot’ that you may have. For those of you wondering about the corrected version of the pier, there is none.

 

The three children had been banished to this bench, technically a property of the Wolf3 Home For Troubled Children, where they had been living for, in Renee’s case, a few months; in Douglas’ case, a few years; and in Hera’s case, practically all her life; for the horrifying offense of daring to read after lights-out. It had been Hera who had hidden under her covers with one of the lights she always seemed to have, and it had been Hera who had been caught during one of the Home’s frequent unannounced post-lights-out ‘obedience checks,’ but although neither Douglas nor Renee were her family by blood, they both considered themselves her adoptive siblings and defended her, consequently landing them all a trip to the bench of shame.

 

The bench of shame, besides being creaky and gloomy and generally enough to put a damper on even the brightest day, much like this story, was also a five mile walk from the Home proper, a walk the three children had to make escorted by one of the nastiest members of the Home staff. You might think the moral of this little tale is that one ought to never stand up for others, in order to be able to spend one’s night comfortably in one’s own bed, however thin the coverlet or lumpy the mattress, instead of being forced to march five miles in the rain and the dark to an uncovered, decaying bench, but in fact the three children quite liked the bench of shame (which they called the Briny Bench, due to its constant damp and faint odor of pickles.) The reason for this was because the Briny Bench, for all its faults, also provided the only place where the three could truly have some privacy. At the Home, they were constantly either overlooked by negligent, often cruel adults or shoved in like sardines with the other children, who placed at various levels on the scale of bully. But here, once the escort of the day had begun the long plod back to Wolf3, the three were free to relax and joke around and, as long as it didn’t rain, be fully content in being themselves.

 

If I am being honest, the individual lives of the Hephaestus crew became unfortunate at varying points in their young lives. However, all the way up to this last day on the Briny Bench, they had felt that they had still had some amount of control over their lives, no matter how small.

This was about to change, and that is why this tragically unfortunate story starts when it does.

 

Before I get into the wretched details of the Hephaestus account, perhaps it would be helpful to tell you a bit more about each of the children.

 

Renee Minkowski was the oldest, at fourteen. The daughter of a brilliant astrophysicist and an extraordinary French diplomat-turned-spy, she was gifted with a very strong sense of duty and a resulting drive to be the best she could be. In the context of the Home, this usually meant being brave for the younger children, the care of all of whom she considered to be her responsibility, but in another, earlier life, she had wanted to fly airplanes and, someday, rockets, for her country. She had also been in the Scouts when she was younger, and though her badges were long gone, she still kept a strip of her sash material to tie up her hair whenever she needed to think particularly hard.

 

Doug Eiffel was next by years alone, and at first glance he would seem like your typical twelve-going-on-thirteen year old. He liked radios and pizza, and though often managed to get on Renee’s nerves with the sheer incomprehensibility of his reference-filled speech, he could be quite shrewd under pressure. He refused to wear glasses because he complained ‘they would make him look intelligent.’ He was intelligent. Being only twelve, you would think that there would be an abundance of media he had not yet managed to consume. You would be, for the most part wrong-- even Hera had yet to catch him out on a blind spot.

 

Speaking of Hera; last there was, well, Hera. She was clearly the youngest; any outsider could see that, but what they would not immediately observe is the maturity with which she seemingly acted. She was small for her age, but that was to be expected, and what she lacked in size she made up for in sheer tenacity and sharpness of tongue. Although for the most part she spoke English as flawlessly as any natural speaker, on rare occasions, when she was particularly stressed or anxious, she would revert to another, more basic language, one that even Renee couldn’t speak. Still, Renee and Doug could usually get the gist of what she was saying, and during these times they were invaluable assets for helping the rest of the world understand all the clever, beautiful things she was saying.

 

She was having one of these moments now, on the Briny Bench. Doug had his arms around her, holding her tightly as she did her best to hold back the tears threatening to spill over and into the world. Renee was stroking her hair and murmuring soft encouragements into her ear.

Hera’s tears were not because she had been caught, nor were they a direct result of her book. Something inside her was causing her great physical pain, and she was feeling additional emotional effects from her inability to diagnose her symptom.

 

“D’you think they poisoned her?” Doug asked, worry clear in his voice.

 

Renee was a little more logical. “How? None of us have had anything to eat since before Hera got caught.”

 

“Maybe they put it in those special meds she has to take daily.”

 

Renee shook her head. “That was still before Hera even started reading.”

 

“Maybe they found the book in advance. Maybe--”

 

Doug cut off abruptly as Hera said something which roughly translates to: “Shh! There’s someone coming!”

 

“Where? I don’t see anyone…”

 

Hera said something else, which echoed Renee’s statement of “Doug, you idiot, shut up!”

 

He shut up. After a few moments of all three of them straining to make out any further indication of someone else’s presence, Renee and Doug began to hear it, too: a sharp, clipped sound with a bit of _crunch_ to it, much like the sound high heels make against a gravelly path.

 

I have long nursed a glass or two of fine whiskey whenever even the thought of the person the Hephaestus Crew were about to meet crosses my mind. I am sad to say that this whisky is not drunk for any sort of celebratory purposes, unless you consider drinking to forget a form of celebration, in which case I defer to you, good citizen, and trust that you know what you are doing with your life. In fact, if such a lifestyle is to your taste, I suggest putting down this story and drinking to forget it and all the pitiful events which are contained inside.

 

In any case, the three children did not have any whisky, nor even any form of alcohol, seeing as they were quite underage, on or near them with which to prepare themselves for meeting the person who would soon arrive in front of them; nor did they have the option of leaving behind their story, unlike you, dear reader. And so they waited, in growing anticipation, listening to each sickening clip- _crunch_ draw closer and closer to their miserable old bench.

 

“It’s only scary,” said Renee, although her hand was tight in Doug’s, “because it’s unknown.”

 

“ _I_ know who it is,” said Hera, and before either Doug or Renee could jump to pepper her with questions-- _You’re feeling better? Did you pinpoint the source of the pain? Who is coming up the path?_ \-- the answer to their last emerged in front of them.

 

She was a smart-looking businesswoman, skirtsuit crisp and clean, its dark navy doing nothing to detract from the bold vermilion of her lips. Said lips were currently twisted up into an imitation of a smile. To anyone that knew her, the smile would have been known as the most genuine the woman could offer up in this circumstance, but to the three children it was grotesque at best, frighteningly false at its worst. When she spoke, her voice was high and clear, and Doug hated her immediately.

 

“Hello children. Come along.”

 

There was a momentary silence, then Hera and Renee both piped up; Renee’s semi-snarled “who _are_ you” overlapping with Hera’s disdainful “Miss Young.”

 

“Yes. That’s me. Is there a problem?”

 

“Yeah there’s a problem. I was taught not to follow strangers.”

 

Young laughed, and the sound was simultaneously the tinkling of wind chimes and the taste of soured butter.

 

“But Douglas, we aren’t _strangers_. We’re family.”

 

“What? Are you crazy, lady? First of all, we look nothing alike. Second of all--”

 

“Oh, haven’t you heard? The Home signed you over last evening. Your new guardian said he’d send someone to pick you up in the morning and, well, he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

 

“Why should we believe you? Where’s your proof?”

 

“Please. The paperwork’s right here, kiddos. So let’s get moving--”

 

“Why do they want us? We’re troubled kids, _orphans_ . We don’t do _families_.”

 

Young smiled, all even rows of pearly-whites.

 

“You do now.”


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _For [REDACTED]--  
>  I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.  
> I imagine your memory so often it feels more like death._

It is unnecessary for me to explain, I’m sure, how cramped a compact car is with three children, two of whom are teenagers, shoved into the backseat. There is no need for me to describe in gory detail how said children had hands clasped in hands so tightly the eldest was afraid their hands would all lose feeling. And of course, it would be pretentious of me to presume that you would need me to lay out for you the exact rising queasy motion that accompanies a particularly long road trip, especially when one is not sure of the intended destination-- in fact, this reminds me of one instance where-- but that’s not important right now. What’s important is that to those of you who are continuing to read this dismal account, I implore you: stop now. Pull out before it is too late, and perhaps sell your device to a resale shop while you’re at it-- buy yourself something nice with the extra cash. You’ll deserve it, for having walked away, and you can enjoy whatever it is you decide to splurge on with the peace of mind that you did not subject yourself to the dreadful tale of the Hephaestus Crew.

 

Renee, Hera, and Doug were experiencing the aforementioned rising queasy motion as they sat tensely in the back of Miss Young’s car on a drive that could be described as endless, a word which in this case happens to mean both excruciatingly lengthy and literally without end, as the children had no idea where Miss Young was taking them. They could make some educated guesses of course. Renee figured that their new guardian must be both rich and busy, and therefore somewhat important, as he was able to send someone else to collect them instead of coming himself, and the person he sent was dressed quite fashionably and expensively, and therefore they might be headed somewhere grand and in good taste. Hera, who had met Miss Young before, felt that she had a good idea of who their new guardian may be, and consequently felt that he must have something special in store for them. And Doug thought it was somewhat suspicious that Miss Young had neither given them her first name, as it is often polite to do when introducing yourself to someone new, nor, more concerningly, the name of their new guardian, and so wherever she was taking them could not be particularly good.

 

Each of the children was right in their own way. As Miss Young pulled up in front of a rather enormous gate, with thick bars constructed of solid iron and the letters G and F embossed in heavy lettering on top, the children looked at one another in the backseat in apprehension. When Miss Young rolled down the driver’s side window and leaned out in order to answer a series of complicated questions with a set of even more complicated answers in order to confirm her identity and unlock the heavy gate in front of them so she could deliver the children to their new guardian, they squeezed each other’s hands even tighter for comfort. And as the gate opened without a single creak and allowed Miss Young to begin to take the car up the long, winding driveway up to their final destination, Renee, Hera, and Doug watched the towering trees that lined the road pass by the windows as they contemplated exactly who-- or  _ what-- _ they were about to meet.

 

When Miss Young finally stopped the car, the children craned their necks to try and get a look at their new home. Try as they might, however, the car had been stopped at such an angle that it was practically impossible for any of the three to catch even the slightest glimpse of any sort of building.

 

“Are we supposed to  _ camp? _ ” whispered Doug to Hera.

 

Renee squeezed his hand in warning, but before she could warn him not to anger their guardian before they had even met him, Miss Young turned in her seat to face them. Her sunglasses, the lenses of which were very, very dark, gave her an eerie air, as none of the Hephaestus Crew could tell which one of them she was looking at at any given time. Doug squirmed in his seat, looking down at the base of the car so he wouldn’t have to try and pierce through the shadowy cloak of the glasses, which enveloped almost the entirety of the top half of Miss Young’s head. Hera shuddered in her seat, but stared directly at the glasses anyways, as if she could see right through them to what resided underneath.

 

“Now, children, I’m sure you’re all very excited to meet your new guardian. I know I am.” 

 

Miss Young’s tone sounded anything but. Hera privately thought that if her voice lay any more flat, they might be able to have a comfortable drive over it back home. She did not say this, however, as she had been taught, as many children are, that if one did not have anything nice to say, one should not say anything at all.

 

This is, of course, a silly rule, and there are times where saying nothing at all can be at best, infuriating to one or more parties involved, and at worst, dangerous. For example, if two roommates are in a fight such that one secretly detests the various shenanigans-- a word which here means ‘mysterious activities so shocking that neither party would ever like to recall the complete details, and as such has been mutually decided to never be referred to again--’ of the other concerning a particular set of fancy cheeses, then the first refraining from telling her roommate just what she thinks of his shenanigans might result in a terrible betrayal years later when a secret file on a dilapidated space station is read out loud in both of their presences. Or, for instance, if I were to be trapped in a room with my former boss and his work-wife as they had my favorite subordinate taking dictation while they interrogated me about the death of a close colleague, failing to give away crucial, but damning information about my subordinate’s activities might lead to my being promoted to a position that would only tax me further into my deception, even as the wedge between my subordinate and I grew larger and larger, pushing us away from each other forever.

Still, this was the way Hera’s past guardians had chosen to raise her, and so it was to this principle Hera adhered. The youngest member of the Hephaestus Crew often found that she got headaches, ranging from relatively mild to possibly life-threatening, whenever she considered breaking one of the ideals she had been taught as a young girl. 

 

Miss Young continued, oblivious to Hera’s analysis, “So I know that you’ll agree with me when I say that first impressions are the best impressions. Your guardian is a very busy man, and a failure to live up to his expectations might not leave you room for a second chance.”

 

“Excuse me, Miss Young, but what is he busy  _ with? _ ” Renee asked, figuring that the more the children knew about him before they met him, the better first impression they could pull off.

 

Miss Young, however, was indifferent to Renee’s agenda.

 

“I’ll expect he’ll tell you himself, when the time comes. Now, listen very closely:”

 

The three children in the backseat felt themselves all unconsciously moving closer as she lowered her voice.

 

“Some simple tips for your interactions with Mr Cutter: Speak only when you are spoken to. Keep your sentences very short, and to the point. Mr Cutter does not like waste; in fact he hardly tolerates it. Efficiency is the name of the game in this household. Be very judicious with your eye contact. He asks you a question, you answer.  _ Don’t lie _ . He’ll know. Nobody knows how, but he always knows.”

 

Hera wanted to point out that the sentence ‘Mr Cutter does not like waste; in fact he hardly tolerates it,’ was, in this context, wasteful as well, but she held her tongue. Renee, meanwhile, had a pertinent question: 

 

“What should we call our new guardian?”

 

“Whatever he asks you to call him,” said Miss Young simply. “Until then,  _ sir _ is a good place to start. Now, relax, you three! We can’t have you walking inside like a three-pack of plywood. Remember, first impressions--”

 

“Are the best impressions,” the three children chorused mournfully.

 

For all their inhibitions, not one of the three children could deny as they stepped out of the car that the building they were looking at was nothing short of majestic. ‘Mansion’ wouldn’t have been enough to encapsulate the trio’s experience of standing in front of such a monumental structure. It was tall, the front facade graced with enormous columns and poles and “braided” sections along with numerous other adornments that neither Renee nor Doug had the words to describe.

 

“It looks like some strange hybrid of Giyofu and Baroque architecture,” said Hera. “There’s some other elements, too, but I can’t quite put my finger on them--”

 

“No time to gawk; come on, up the steps you go.”

 

And there certainly were steps. Doug groaned just by thinking about having to climb them all, and even hardy Renee had to admit that, for an entrance, it did seem unnecessarily difficult to access. By the time they reached the top, all three children were out of breath and just the slightest bit sweaty, and all of sudden incredibly grateful that they’d had no luggage to bring. Not one of them particularly wanted to meet the guardian who chose to dwell in a place that required them to make that climb, let alone make a good first impression. Still, none of them wanted to risk the possibility Miss Young had mentioned of not having a second chance, whatever that meant, and so they followed dutifully as she led them through a veritable maze of corridors, each one seemingly longer and richer than the previous.

 

“Do you think he’ll like us?” Doug whispered to the other two once they had finally stopped in front of a large, oaken door. Miss Young had simply told them to wait, and then had disappeared to goodness knows where, and so the children were left to simmer in their own anxious thoughts until their guardian saw fit to invite them in.

 

“I’m not sure I can tell you, Doug,” said Renee. “After all, we know so little about the man. He’s a rich, busy man-- what if he tires of us and throws us out of his house? What if we fail to make the good impression Miss Young stressed we absolutely had to make?”

 

“I’m sure he’ll seem fantastically overjoyed to see us,” said Hera, and the bitterness in her tone caused Doug and Renee to turn to her in confusion, half-formed questions lingering on the tips of their tongues before disappearing back into their throats as the doors in front of them began to rumble.

 

They joined hands, and, out of instinct, each took several steps back. Their eyes widened as the doors trembled, then, without warning, swung outwards so smoothly Renee nearly jumped. She’d heard of pneumatic pressure systems like this one before, but never one this level of complex, or, indeed, installed in a private home.

 

“I’ve heard of pneumatic systems like this one before,” she whispered, “but never one--”

 

“This level of complex? Ah, children, come in, come in.”

 

The children squinted into the room, but the lighting was such that they could not make out the face of the figure sitting at the magnificent mahogany desk. Tentatively, they took their first few steps inside, hands still joined.

 

“Welcome,” said the man at the desk, face cast in the interplay of light and shadow specifically designed to make one think he was exactly what you thought he was, “to my humble home.”


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _For [REDACTED]--  
>  They say to love is to have lived.  
> Emphasis on the past tense._

Renee, Hera, and Doug couldn’t help but look at each other in disbelief as the words “humble home” left the man’s mouth. After all, the enormous, decorated building they were standing in was anything but humble; in fact, if the children had had to pick on place on Earth to describe as the antithesis of humble, they would have, without hesitation, named the man’s home. Of course, “humble home” is an expression, said by adults to guests in order to project the appearance of not caring about material objects, although often the same adults will proceed to show you their most prized possessions, such as a bottle of Balvenie scotch worth $37,500, for instance, and proceed to expect you to fawn over them with an appropriate degree of appreciative envy. 

 

This is, of course, perfectly normal in adult society.

 

The man was either unaware of the irony of his speech or was very good at pretending that he was, either of which made him very, very dangerous, although of this, the children were most certainly unaware.

 

“Well? Hello, hello, hello! Renee,” and he looked at Renee, who did not move a muscle, “Hera,” and he looked at Hera, who bit the inside of her jaw and refused to look him in the eyes, “Doug,” and he looked at Doug, who raised his hand.

 

“Yes, Doug?”

 

“Can we sit? Sir,” he added hastily, after Hera jabbed him in the side with her elbow.

 

“But of course.”

 

The three children sank into the three conveniently placed chairs in front of the desk. Renee sat stiffly upright, wary of touching anything, even the chair’s back. Hera deliberately slouched, then jumped as if something had stung her, and for the remaining time sat in a slightly more relaxed version of Renee’s pose. Doug, too, was not as relaxed as he normally would have been-- for one thing, he didn’t swing his legs or curl up sideways in the seat-- but his hands fisted into the cool velvet of the seat pad, his fingers worrying at the tiny fibers, brushing around the surface to trace unconscious patterns. The man leaned forward, steepled his fingers against the desk, and smiled.

 

“Can I get you anything, Doug? Punch, coffee, wine-- a chai perhaps?”

 

“Sir-- he’s twelve…--”

 

“Renee, what about you? Fancy a drink? And, oh, Hera. What a surprise. You’ve grown quite a bit since the last time I saw you. You almost look… independent.”

 

“Hera, you know this man?” asked Doug incredulously

 

“We’ve met,” said Hera, through gritted teeth.

 

“I think some chais sound nice.” The man pressed a buzzer on his desk. “Lea, can we get three chais in my office?” Lea, presumably, was his secretary. Hera stared at the blinking light that had newly appeared on the buzzer console.

 

Doug squinted. “You’re not going to drink one? Sir?”

 

The man laughed. “No, I am. But seeing as Hera over here can’t exactly drink chai…”

 

“And why not?” asked Renee. 

 

“Oh, no no no. That’s...that’s for Hera to say.”

 

“Hera?”

 

There was a tense beat of silence as Hera ran through all the possible ways she could justify murdering the man behind the desk to the police. Then, all at once, the tension broke. She shrugged.

 

“I can drink chai just fine.”

 

For the first time since stepping into his office, she made direct eye contact with the man. In the somewhat juvenile tradition of business executives, they had a little staring contest, which ended with Hera flicking her eyes to the man’s ankles, visible beneath the desk, before re-establishing contact.

 

The man smiled. Then he shrugged. Then he smiled some more. He pressed the buzzer again, eyes not leaving Hera as he lowered his mouth to the device and said,

 

“Make that four chais.”

 

The sound of the buzzer as he released the button seemed to the three children to sound like the word  _ wrong, _ so that as the residual buzzing faded into the air it seemed as if the buzzer was giving the children one final warning, reminding them that everything was about to go  _ wrong! wrong! wrong! wrong! wrong! _

 

The chais arrived, faster than Renee and Doug had thought possible, and were served to them in fancy silver mugs monogrammed with the same GF they had seen on the gate when entering the property. The man continued to make small talk as they drank, and formally introduced himself as “Mr Cutter, Director of Communications.” He did not elaborate on what he was the Director of Communications  _ for _ . Now that he had leaned forward, the children could make out a few more of his features; as you and I both know, the addition of light to any seemingly dark scene can immediately cast it in a new light, banishing all the monsters that you were sure were hiding in your great-aunt’s second laundry chute. Unfortunately for the Hephaestus Crew, there was no one to shine a light onto their dismal, dark story; only I to do my best to put the pieces back together afterwards.

 

In this case, the absence of the shadows that had formerly buried themselves into the curves of his skin showed that Mr Cutter had a surprisingly pleasant face, one that seemed to invite the children to  _ trust me! _ Of course, pleasant faces do not always mean that a pleasant person lies beneath, and in my experience often betray the opposite, but to Renee and Doug it was comforting to see a friendly face outside of themselves and Hera for the first time in a very long period.

 

A scrap of velvet I found years later, along with the faded material of the back of a chair much like the ones the three children were sitting in, told me that, as the conversation continued, Renee and Doug felt themselves increasingly at ease, while Hera remained stiff and standoffish. Every so often, she would try to roll her eyes, or relax into her chair, and then, with a jolt, return to her perfect posture. Each time this happened, she would make eye contact with Mr Cutter, whose smile always seemed to grow wider.

 

Finally, the youngest member of the trio could not take it any longer. As Renee was mid-sentence into an explanation of the way she had managed to increase the efficiency of the nightly bedtime ritual at the Home, Hera snapped.

 

“Why did you adopt us?” she bit out, cutting a startled Renee off with a gasp. Doug’s head flicked back and forth between her and Mr Cutter, eyes as wide as dinner plates as he waited for an answer.

 

Mr Cutter patiently sipped his chai, placing his mug meticulously down on his desk and wiping his mouth with a monogrammed napkin before responding in a voice as smooth as the ceramic on a particularly well-designed tea set,

 

“You lucky kids happened to...catch my eye, let’s say. I take an interest in, well, diamonds in the rough, of a sort. It’s a habit I admire in many of my top-level employees.”

 

“I’m sorry,” said Renee, looking somewhat confused. “Are you implying that you’re hiring us?”

 

“I’m not implying, Renee. I’m telling.” At the three’s puzzled expressions, he continued, “Part of the adoption agreement registered you three as official employees of my company. Isn’t that just great?”

 

“Is that even legal?”

 

“I assure you Renee, every inch of this document is binding.”

 

“But we’re just children! How can children be allowed to work for a fancy, successful company--” because Mr Cutter’s company  _ must _ have been both fancy and successful in order to justify the amount of opulence his home was drenched in-- “like yours?”

 

“Once a child has turned fourteen, they may be permitted to work a full-time job given the permission of their parent and/or guardian. As your parent and/or guardian, I authorized you to work.”

 

“What about Doug and Hera? Neither of them are fourteen.”

 

“Nice catch, Renee! Sharp. I like that. You’re correct, Douglas is not yet fourteen, and will only be working part-time shifts, as specifically defined in his contract.”

 

“And Hera? She isn’t anywhere close to fourteen! She’s not even really ten!” cried Doug.

 

“No,” Cutter agreed. “Hera is… a special case.”

 

Hera looked down at her scribble-covered shoes.

 

“Now, unless you have any further questions?”

 

“I do, actually,” said Doug. “What will we be doing as part of our jobs?”

 

Cutter  _ hmed _ . Then he frowned. Then he smiled again. Then he leaned a little bit further towards Doug. 

 

“How much do you know about aliens?”

 

Doug’s eyes widened further than Renee or Hera had ever seen them go before. 

 

“Like the telepathic monolith from  _ 2001? _ Or like Superman? Or...or flying saucers!”

 

Renee groaned. “Flying saucers aren’t real, Doug.”

 

Cutter chuckled. “UFOs are a very favored daydream, yes, but let the boy have his fun.” 

 

He leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other, and with the motion the children felt like the conversation had been closed.

 

“I’ll see you all bright and early tomorrow morning, when we will go over your work assignments in more detail and perhaps, if we have time, dive a little bit into each of your backstories, hm?”

 

The children were silent.

 

Mr Cutter pressed a different button on the same buzzer he had used earlier to contact Lea-possibly-the-secretary.

 

“Rachel? Show the children to their rooms.”

 

As the trio looked uneasily at one another as they waited to be escorted to their mysterious, yet pleasant, rooms in this mysterious, yet pleasant, house owned by this mysterious, yet pleasant, man,  the sound of the released buzzer echoed throughout the room, once again reminding them that everything about this situation was absolutely  _ wrong! _


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _To [REDACTED]--  
>  The flames were red,  
> Your face was blue;  
> So is my heart  
> When it thinks of you._

After Rachel, who had turned out to be Miss Young, had led them to their rooms, the children spent a night tossing and turning in sheets softer than Doug’s hair. None of them particularly liked the idea of being separated from each other, and just one of the beds provided for them was larger than all three of their individual beds at the Home put together, so the three of them curled up together and tried not to think about their impending fates.

 

“Do you think there really are aliens?” whispered Doug, voice soft in the way that one’s voice tends to loosen right before one falls asleep.

 

Renee stared directly at the ceiling, trying to formulate an answer that would both please Doug and satisfy herself. All she could come up with was,

 

“I’m not really sure _what_ I think anymore. But...I think,” she paused, trying to streamline her words, “if there _are_ aliens...this man would be the first to know.”

 

Doug yawned, and shifted so that he was snuggled up into the crook of Renee’s arm.

 

“D’you think the aliens know about us?”

 

Renee’s thumb moved to stroke his hair as his breathing began to grow deeper.

 

“I don’t know, Doug. I don’t know.”

 

There was a pause in which she thought Doug had fallen asleep, but then he spoke again, voice sleep-soaked and eyes fluttering to stay open.

 

“Now that we’re adopted, I really am the annoying younger brother you never had.”

 

Renee didn’t respond, but her lips curved into a small smile and she pulled Doug a little closer.

 

This is the point at which I recommend you stop reading, put down your phone, close your laptop, and snuggle up inside your own bed, pretending that this sweet scene between adoptive brother and sister is the precursor to a flurry of other sweet scenes between siblings, and that Renee, Doug, and Hera woke up in the morning feeling completely refreshed, that the work assignments Mr Cutter gave them were actually just an eccentric spin on doing normal children things, like rollerskating, and going to the movies, and cracking ancient codes in a storm drain in the middle of the night aided merely by a sputtering flashlight and your knowledge of library reference systems.

 

Alas, this was not so. For as Doug and, eventually, Renee, drifted off to sleep, there was still one child who was wide awake. Hera stubbornly had faced the wall from her position on the outer edge of the bed, and as Renee and Doug had voiced their thoughts, she’d avoided thinking about the last time she had slept on such a high-quality mattress. Now, alone with her memories at last, she shivered, the images in her brain considerably more vivid without any background chatter to drown them out. In the past, when the youngest member of the Hephaestus Crew had climbed into bed with one of the others in the middle of the night claiming nightmares, she would always entangle her legs with whichever of the other two happened to be sharing their thin pallet with her as a way to subconsciously ground her, reassure her that everything was going to be fine. On this night, however, Hera’s legs seemed miles from even brushing against Renee’s, and she felt as if she was drowning in the enormity of the sea of sheets.

 

It was only in the earliest hours of the morning, as the sun was gearing up to make its grand entrance over the city again while storm clouds brewed in the distance, looming ominously, although not yet threateningly, that she was able to finally drift off into a dreamless slumber.

 

The children were woken in the morning ‘bright and early’ as promised by a man who grinned at them like they were fresh pieces of meat.

 

“Hurry up you lot,” he said, without even bothering with a ‘good morning.’ “Don’t want to keep Mr Cutter waiting.”

 

His accent was rather unique, and even Hera couldn’t make a certain guess as to where it might have originated.

 

As the children jumped into action to wash and make themselves as reasonably presentable as they could, the man leaned against the doorway and watched them get ready. Thankfully, they were able to finish up quite quickly, seeing as none of them had any clothes to change into, and although the man _tsk_ ed and made a big show of checking his oversized gilt watch before peeling off the wall and making an impatient ‘follow me’ gesture with his oversized, hairy hand, they were right on track to make their appointment without any further delays.

 

Mr Cutter looked up from a sheaf of papers as the man knocked.

 

“Ah, thank you, Victor. Come in, come in. It’s nice to see your fresh faces all raring to go this early in the morning. How was your night? Comfortable? Can I get you something to eat?”

 

Renee and Doug blinked. Cutter took a long drink out of the silver mug perched on the corner of the desk, and then raised an eyebrow.

 

“Victor? That’ll be all.”

 

“Of course sir,” said the man who had brought them to Cutter’s office. Now that he was speaking to his boss, and not three tiny children with nothing to their names, his entire demeanor had changed; his voice was no longer brash and condescending, but deferent, and his body language indicated that displeasing Mr Cutter was the last thing he wanted to do. “Would you like me to notify the kitchen staff to send in a breakfast, sir?”

 

“That would be wonderful,” Cutter said, and he emphasized his words in the passive-aggressive way you might emphasize the words “I’m fine,” in order to get someone else to leave you alone, although whether you actually are fine is irrelevant to the situation, a tactic someone I used to be very close to often employed.

 

Victor took the hint and scuttled off to whatever nasty hidey-hole men like him reside in when not carrying out one of their master’s orders, and the three children were once again left alone with Mr Cutter, who smiled at them not unlike Victor had earlier that morning.

 

“Now,” he said, “I’m sure you’re all very eager to receive your work assignments, so listen closely. Renee, you’ll be in the navigations department, working with some of my lead engineers on some deep sky survey reparations, as well as receiving a little training in self-defense and some standard low-grade weaponry.”

 

Doug and Hera turned to Renee. She glanced back at them, and gave a slight shrug of her shoulders.

 

“Doug, I know you like your radios, so you’ll be taking some shifts with the communications department. Believe me, I’m very excited to see what you’re capable of. I’ve heard many good things about your work.”

 

Renee and Hera both looked at Doug, and it was his turn to shrug. He did not know how Mr Cutter had heard about his radio talents, but he did not have much time to reflect on it as Cutter continued, voice a degree more joyful,

 

“And Hera, I’ve arranged a little reunion for you! Unfortunately, Dr Pryce wasn’t able to make time to see you today, but don’t worry! She’ll be back in town tomorrow, and she’s _very_ much looking forward to seeing you again!”

 

At the name ‘Dr Pryce,’ Hera’s face paled, and her head snapped upwards. It was her turn to be turned towards by the other two children, but the churning in her stomach kept her from being able to shrug lightly as the others had. Before Renee and Doug could question her about her sudden reticence, the doors to the office flew open, and two women with faces that were covered with so much white powder that the children would have been hard-pressed to make out any proper facial features entered, carrying a silver platter larger than the length of Cutter’s desk, piled with heaps of food so mouthwatering the children couldn’t help but lose their train of thought for a second. However, not wanting to be rude, none of the children reached for even a piece of fruit as they waited for a signal that it would not be impolite to start eating.

 

“Hera? Do you have something to say? Anything on your mind?”

 

Hera, who had only been mildly distracted by the prospect of sinking her teeth into the teering stack of buttered toast and jam, started, the anger and fear flowing back into her veins. As the years have gone by, I have tried to analyze what led to what happened next many times, but I have yet to be successful in piecing together the exact set of events that set that mysterious internal clock into motion, only that Hera was unaware of said proceedings herself, and did not anticipate what changed inside her. As the clock behind Mr Cutter struck seven, a strange rush swept through the room, and every human occupant held their breath as the sensation passed through them. When asked later what it felt like, Renee and Doug were only able to say that it ‘was like… having an awareness of electricity,’ like the tiny spindles of the lightbulbs in the corner lamp and in the inner workings of the computers running one floor below had suddenly announced their presence to the rest of the world, and the thread that ran through it all had taken a path of least resistance that ran right through their chests and into each other.

 

When the feeling finally faded away, none of the inhabitants of the room spoke for a while. Even Cutter had felt the effects, the children realized, as an uncharacteristically dreamy expression balanced delicately on his face.

 

The children looked at each other with a strange combination of unease and the electric bliss they had just felt.

 

“Should we leave?” whispered Doug, afraid of shaking Mr Cutter out of his stupor.

 

Renee cleared her throat.

 

“Mr Cutter?” she asked, even as Doug shook his head violently, and then slapped his palm to his face with a groan, “Mr Cutter, may we be excused?”

 

No response.

 

“Mr Cutter? May we--”

 

“Let’s go,” said Hera, the least affected of them all, and grabbed Doug’s arm, steering him towards the office doors. Renee hesitated, then followed suit, trailing half a foot behind and checking over her shoulder every few seconds to ascertain Cutter was still frozen.

 

They made it to the doors without trouble. Doug and Renee breathed a sigh of relief. But just as Hera placed a hand on the large, weighty, metal handle, a spark of static electricity jumped from the metal to her fingers.

 

“ _Ow!_ ” she hissed, shaking her fingers before putting them in her mouth to try and relieve the pain-- as I’m sure we all know, from one incident or another, static electricity discharge is actually quite painful, and can be extremely dangerous when occurring in the vicinity of multiple flammable objects, such as one’s clothes, or a pair of particularly pretty linen curtains. Unfortunately for the newly-turned siblings, the incident was enough to awaken Mr Cutter from his dream-like state, and they heard a rustling as he sat up in his chair.

 

“And where do you think you’re off to?”

 

Renee slowly turned around, hands raised in the air as if she was under arrest.

“We were simply leaving to get ready for our new jobs. Sir.”

 

There was a pause, and seeing how there was no backlash, Hera started to fumble with the door handle again.

 

“Wait,” said Cutter, and his tone was so dark and filled with such anger that all three children stopped immediately in their tracks, not daring to even breathe.

 

When he spoke again, his voice was back to its usual cheerful self:

 

“Aren’t you kids going to eat breakfast before you go?”

 

As the children dutifully retook their places and began eating from the large platter in front of them, each of them had a question running through their minds. Renee, uneasy with the sequence of events that had just transpired, wondered _What just happened, and why does Cutter not seem to remember it?_

Hera, concerned about Cutter’s eagerness to place a fourteen year old orphan in weaponry training, puzzled over _What possible reason could he have for having Renee learn how to handle weapons?_

And Doug, uncomfortable with the idea of spending long stretches of time alone with Mr Cutter, turned over the most unfortunate question of all: _Why is he splitting us up?”_


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _To [REDACTED]--  
>  They say love is the most wonderful of drugs.  
> Too bad it could not save you._

The navigations center was located in a large room a couple of floors above and a few wings perpendicular from Mr Cutter’s office. It was, in kindest terms, a veritable zoo. If Mr Cutter owned any exotic animals, or, for that matter, any animals at all, I would hope he kept them better than this room was kept. A myriad of lights blinked and changed color, all sorts of alarms blared at regular intervals, and randomly placed relays always seemed to be printing off one report or another. Renee tore off the nearest one, wincing as the perforations got caught in the rusting slide of the relay instrument, tearing the section of the paper with the actual information on it in the process. She glanced at the sheet, but the only printed characters were a seemingly jumbled assortment of numbers. She frowned. Perhaps they were coordinates? But no, there were far too many decimal points on the page to justify following a traditional coordinate system. Phone numbers? But there were no dashes. A secret code? 

 

As she was thinking this, she heard first one set of footsteps, then another, coming from the hallway behind her. Quickly, she smoothed out the sheet flat on the table; then, realizing that the tear was too large to be justified as an incoming error, crumpled the whole thing into a ball and stuck it in her shoe. Hopefully, the report would simply be a routine progress paper for whatever it was referring to, and it would not be missed, let alone get her questioned. Although she was nervous, her heart beating just the slightest bit faster inside her ribcage, she mustered up her best new-student-on-her-first-day-of-class smile and turned towards the source of the footsteps. The eagerness in her eyes was not all a lie as she took in the figure of the woman in front of her-- she was strong, built powerfully, not for speed; determined-- there was something about the set of her jaw and the tilt of her chin that Renee especially admired; and, above all, clearly worthy of respect. It was in the very way she moved, the way a smile broke out like sunbeams all over her face as she took in Renee and stuck out her hand. Renee stared at the proffered hand for a moment, not sure what to think. Of all the adults she and her siblings had met since they’d each moved to the Wolf3 Home, not one had ever offered to shake their hand, let alone looked like they were actually looking forward to completing the act. In the woman in front of her’s face, there was no revulsion, no aloof airs-- simply a genuine desire, it seemed, to mark the start of a new teacher-student relationship with Renee Minkowski. As the woman’s brow began to furrow as her hand continued to hover untouched in the air, Renee grabbed its fingers and shook enthusiastically, the stars in her eyes shining a little brighter.

 

The woman relaxed and smiled, returning Renee’s enthusiasm with the firmness of her grip.

 

“You must be Renee. My name is Commander Bernoulli, and I’ll be overseeing your training for both your navigations and your combat specialties.”

 

Renee smiled up at her; she’d always been a bit of a teacher’s pet, even if Commander Bernoulli hadn’t already given her plenty of reasons to receive her respect.

 

“It’s very nice to meet you,” she said. “If it isn’t too prying of me to ask, what, exactly, are you commanding?”

 

Bernoulli cocked her head. “You don’t waste any time, do you?” Her voice was fond.

 

“Well, most of the details are classified, but I  _ can _ tell you that you’ll get to meet some of my team around the navigations center. Essentially, you’ll get the  _ who _ , but not the  _ what _ . Is that answer satisfactory?”

 

It wasn’t, not really, but Renee could tell that the Commander was doing her best to be accomodating, so she simply dipped her head as a silent yes.

 

“Excellent. Then I suppose we’ll get started? I had intended to ease you in with an introduction to the navigations systems, but seeing as we seem to be having some problems with the equipment, that will have to wait for later. We’ll start with the combat training. Follow me.”

 

Renee struggled to keep up with the Commander’s long strides as she quickly exited the room the way they had both entered and began leading Renee down a convoluted series of hallways. In an attempt to make small talk, Renee tentatively put forth,

 

“Commander? If I may ask-- what’s wrong with the navigations equipment?”

 

“Oh, I’m not sure yet.” At Renee’s bewildered expression she continued, “I’ll send a team to check it out later, but I noticed the relay printer closest to the entrance-- right near where you were standing, in fact-- was missing the report it ought to have had due around the time I introduced myself to you back in the room.”

 

“But-- how do you know it’s the  _ equipment’s _ fault?” 

 

If the Commander had been paying attention closely, she may have caught the slight quaver in her voice. 

 

“Everything here at Goddard Futuristics runs like a well-oiled Swiss clock. If there’s a problem, it’s gotta be from within, and more likely than not the fault’s with the machinery. Ergo, the most likely solution is a mechanical failure with the system. Anyways, we’ll find out later, after Klein and Birkhoff have--”

 

“Goddard Futuristics?” Renee asked, undoubtedly reimagining the GF on the gate and on the mugs her and her siblings’ chai of the day before. “Is that where we are?”

 

Bernoulli stopped in her tracks and winced. “You didn’t hear that from me, sorry.” 

 

Renee stared. If the name of the building was such a secret, then why did Cutter allow everything in the vicinity to be boldly emblazoned with its initials? It didn’t make sense. She didn’t want to correct the Commander, feeling that it would be far too impolite, and besides, she wanted Bernoulli to  _ like _ her. 

 

She stuck to small talk for the rest of the walk, the crumpled paper in her boot  _ crunch _ ing with every step.

 

* * *

 

The day was hot, and Renee squirmed as the sun beat mercilessly into her back. The hand in her grip was larger than hers, and its palm was warm as it enveloped her hand, adding to the constant irritation that came from being hot, bothered, and forced to travel somewhere one did not want to be. I myself have, on several occasions, been in this situation, and although it is never fun to be told to ‘suck it up and deal,’ nor is it often effective for the person or persons giving the order, many people still find it a fine strategy for dealing with children, employees, or other situations where one member of the party has significant power over the other, such as a particularly ill-tempered yet somehow popular birthday girl towards the crowd of other children she made attend her thirteenth birthday party.

 

Renee was stubbornly refusing to look at the face of the person whose hand was linked in hers, in response to a particularly trying moment when they, having exhausted all other options, had told Renee in no uncertain terms, that, although their words were phrased in such a way as to attempt to soften the blow, Renee had better suck it up and deal with the sticky weather if she wanted the two of them to get out of there as a family on time.

 

In the moment, Renee thought nothing of the threat-- after all, in her defense, she knew nothing about her mother’s occupation besides the well-known fact that she was a respected French diplomat, who often worked for months away on end before returning home to Poland and reuniting with her husband and lone daughter. She did not know about the other, less elegant, although often portrayed as no less sexy, facet of her job description, a piece of information that, if she had possessed, may have made her heed her mother’s words a little more carefully.

 

Renee’s preferred method of subterfuge was to take diplomacy to extremes; if, for example, her father asked her to keep her voice down during an episode where she was feeling particularly boisterous, she would immediately quiet down, being so very careful as to not make a single peep even when he, a few hours later, called from the kitchen to ask what she wanted for dinner. When the primary school bully had pushed her and the few friends she had managed to acquire to the ground on a cloudy afternoon, and her teachers responded by attempting to soothe the girls by telling them ‘it was his way of saying he likes you,’ (a terrible concept to be teaching any child, really, but some adults can be just as lazy as the most unmotivated infant when matters of children’s happiness are concerned,) Renee pretended to take the teachers’ words at face value, allowing no change in her behavior to reflect upon the bully for the next few hours apart from an extra smile here or there, before tackling said bully into a large pile of mud as school let out for the day.

 

The teachers were not impressed with how she had interpreted their statements, but there was nothing they could do as she stood there, smiling, her few friends beaming from the sidelines, face gritty and streaked with mud while her hair, which had fallen out of its plait, waved with the wind.

 

It was this same method of hyper-interpretation that she was putting into use now, as she stood in line hand-in-hand with her mother, her father a few paces behind. It was why, when her mother let go of her hand, although she had explicitly promised to never do so during the whole of immigrations, she did not turn around or verbally respond. It was why, when her father called her mother’s name-- not loud enough to draw any unwanted attention, but certainly in a tone filled with enough worry for a more critically thinking Renee to turn around in alarm-- she stood stock-still in line, facing the direction that would end in a small desk where an overworked and underpaid employee waited wearily to get through the day’s proceedings. It was why, even as she felt her father step out of line and walk with brisk steps perpendicularly away from her, she did not move or call out or go after him; she  _ sucked it up and dealt with it _ .

 

It was only after the sun began to creep downwards from its spot at the ceiling of the sky, once she was standing far ahead enough in line to be able to actually catch a glimpse of the overworked and underpaid employee’s uniform amidst the crowd in front of her, that a small seed of worry began to gnaw at her stomach. She began to turn her head to the left, to see if her parents were still in the vicinity, but caught the eye instead of a strange man, idling a few feet away from the line, and yet certainly not a part of it. He was smoking, which may have explained his distance, but as Renee made eye contact, he raised an eyebrow, removed the cigarette from his lips, and blew a large cloud of smoke her way, smiling nastily as he did so. As she coughed and hacked while the people on either side of her in line gave her dirty looks, the man tapped his wallet, then pointed at her, giving her the same sleazy, confident, i-know-something-you-don’t grin. Renee looked away quickly, and as she did so, realized she had seen him before-- back when she and her parents had first joined the line, she, licking a yellow ice cream, had glanced up to offer her mother a taste when she had noticed him at the fringe of the crowd and had unconsciously pressed a little closer, her mother’s hand immediately pressing the back of her neck against her stomach as if she had known exactly what Renee had seen. Now, catching sight of him again this far up made her sure that he was following her-- and that, at the very least, he meant he no small amount of harm. And yet, he hadn’t made any sort of move for hours, had only followed alongside the line from a respectful distance. Her only hope, she thought, was to continue to flow with the line until she reached the overworked and underpaid employee, at which point hopefully she could call for her parents, or for help. Sucking it up and dealing with it was about to become the strategy that saved her life.

 

Every step felt like she was walking through wet cement; her whole body moving sluggishly as the line inched forward. Time felt like it was simply  _ cr a w  l i n g _ by, and even the beads of sweat that began to gather at her forehead seemed to roll down her face in slow motion. Finally, after an excruciatingly long ordeal, she was at the front of the line. She chanced a glance to her left. To her alarm, the man was striding towards her at a comfortable but determined pace, and she turned her eyes to the couple in front of her, mentally begging them to  _ hurry up! _ Her breathing began to shallow out, her heart rate climbing exponentially as her blood pounded in her ears. She couldn’t bring herself to look to the left again, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to think of something,  _ anything _ she could do to stop or derail his progress. 

 

Just as the couple ( _ finally! _ ) moved away from the overworked and underpaid employee, she felt a hand on her shoulder. 

 

She whirled around and opened her mouth, halfway to a scream, but another, separate pair of hands covered her mouth.

 

“Shh, Renee, shh-hh.”

 

As Renee’s terrified eyes dragged themselves upwards to see the face of her captor, a familiar scent caught her nose’s attention. Sniffing once again caused her entire body to relax, and her lips curved against the hands over them. She knew these people.

 

Leaning her head back against her other ‘captor’’s chest, she smiled as the hands fell away from her shoulders and face, and she was hugged by two separate, warm pairs of arms. 

 

The overworked and underpaid employee coughed, and the Minkowski family broke apart, Renee’s father fumbling for their official documents as her mother leaned her elbows on Renee’s shoulders. 

 

“Sorry about that, Gwiazdeczko . Your father and I discovered we had...forgotten to take care of something before we left.” She ruffled her hair. “But you dealt with being all by yourself just fine. Your father and I are very proud of you.”

 

They both watched as her father dropped his wallet, cursed, then bent to pick up the scattered passports.

 

Renee twisted her head around to look directly at her mother.

 

“Musiałem wziąć się w garść.*”

 

They both smiled.

 

* * *

 

“Renee!” shouted Bernoulli from across the training room. “Focus. That bag isn’t going to punch itself.”

 

Renee was tired, and weary, and hot from being stuck in the stuffy training room for hours without rest. I, myself, have trained in that room, and in a similar fashion to the eldest Hephaestus Crew member, my first impression had been one of awe when I first walked into the gym-like room, nestled away in a hidden corridor somewhere in the Goddard mansion, every square inch of its walls covered in both outdated and the newest pieces of offensive and defensive technology. Knives, remote-arm-missiles, harpoon guns, tangles upon tangles of multicolored wires that only the most specialized of experts would know how to exploit-- the training room was designed to intimidate its visitors, and to remind them of their small, but significant place within the system hierarchy. I for one, having gone to school with-- but this is the Hephaestus Crew’s story I am supposed to be telling, not my own, which, though miserable, is not quite as wretched as you will find theirs to be. And, Chapter Five in particular is meant to be dedicated to Renee Minkowski’s first impressions. I will, therefore, leave you with tantalizing half-sentence, and continue to describe her own experiences and feelings.

 

Renee Minkowski ached. She was sore already, despite not yet having had the chance to sleep and recover, and she knew this meant that waking up the following morning would be hellish, indeed. She wondered if this was why Cutter had insisted upon giving her and her new siblings their own enormous separate beds, as opposed to saving space and stuffing them all in on a cot at the back of some closet (although she and Doug had both had enough of time spent in those.)

Bernoulli claimed to have been ‘taking it easy on her,’ but she felt utterly hopeless to stop any of the woman’s powerful attacks. She had managed to calm her fight-or-flight reflexes enough such that she did not instinctually move to get out of the way every time the Commander ran at her, but it would still be difficult to term her strategic growth as containing any sort of major ‘improvement.’ A couple of times here and there she had managed to catch the Commander’s leg as she kicked, and once she had even spotted an opening for landing a punch, but she was neither balanced nor quick enough to take advantage of either of these opportunities, and soon found herself back on the ground, shoulder throbbing where she knew another two bruises would form in the morning.

 

Consequently, she had been demoted to the punching bag until her form improved to a level Bernoulli was satisfied with.

 

It hurt, and Bernoulli’s unchallenged determination had started to sting, in the later hours, but she’d suck it up and deal with it.

 

She always did.

 

* * *

 

*Polish; this can be roughly translated as “I had to suck it up.”


	6. The Recollection Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _For [REDACTED]--  
>  You answered my letters with notes on CRISPR.  
> We didn’t know then just how much crisper you would get._

While the eldest Hephaestus sibling was doing her very best to keep all her bones intact, Hera was sitting alone in a cold, grey room, swinging her legs nervously back and forth in a way she hadn’t done in….years. Her thoughts were as bleak as the outcome of this story, and it was only the gentle pressure of her teeth worrying at her bottom lip that kept her from dissolving back into the past. 

 

The room wasn’t helping. Although later scans of my own have revealed that the room was, in fact, set to equilibrium at a lower temperature than much of the rest of the house, it wasn’t the cold that had Hera shivering so slightly you might have missed it if you weren’t looking explicitly for the motion. As her eyes darted around the room, searching for something comforting to latch onto while she waited for the reunion Cutter had seemed so ecstatic about organizing, flashes of light caught the corners of her eyes, begging her to turn her head, to  _ look this way _ , to  _ remember _ . 

 

She’d really rather not, if it’s all the same to them.

 

In an attempt to distract herself, she squeezed her eyes all the way shut, intending to open them again immediately to block out any bad memories. Unfortunately for Hera, stuck in this unfortunate tale, it didn’t exactly work out that way. The second her eyes fell closed, she felt a strange prickling behind her eyelids, which grew angrier and more insistent the longer she waited. She tried to force her eyes open, but to no avail. Even her hands, which she had moved to her face and were now trying to pry apart an eyelid, had only fruitless efforts. It was no use; she was stuck, and already a headache was beginning to form.

 

You could stop here, of course, and not have to sit through reading my description of Hera’s increasing frustration as she went through an experience that felt quite similar to being blinded by several hundred belligerent bees, or of the agonizing minutes (although they felt like particularly vindictive hours to Hera) she spent in that transition hell, or, of course, the depressing nature of what it was, exactly, that she was transitioning  _ to _ . In fact, I would advise doing so, and turning to another story, like  _ something enchanted, something deadly _ by goldtreesilvertree and mothwrites, which, unlike this one, contains chapter after chapter of noble deeds, heroic nobles, and resurrected heroes, with their romantic battles and their battle-filled romance. Perhaps most importantly, unlike this story with its immoral deeds, corrupt business executives, and very, very dead parents,  _ sesd _ has an ending that can be classified as ‘happy,’ a word you will not see me use many more times within this narrative.

 

If you still intend to put up a brave face in order to soldier on through this narrative, I recommend purchasing the highest quality brave face your money can buy, as thick protection most likely will be required to protect oneself from the desolate nature of what I am about to describe. I, myself, at the time of writing this, am nursing a solid glass of scotch in order to keep me from becoming too jaded and abandoning this manuscript altogether, something I cannot do for the sake of my own sanity and the promises I have made. 

 

Hera herself was about to wish she had a brave face higher in quality than what she’d harriedly cobbled together over the years using nothing but her own independent will. As the headache raged, a pressure began to build up behind her forehead, and the air around her face seemed to slowly get hotter. Her hands, which had migrated to gripping her seat of her chair tightly, now seemed glued to their spots, and her legs felt frozen, both in motion and in temperature. Her teeth chattered even as her ears burned. If Minkowski had been in the room with her, she knew, she would have reached over worriedly and placed her cool hand on her forehead, commented on the heat radiating away from her skin, begun devising the best plan with which to steal a couple ibuprofens from the enormity that was Cutter’s mansion. 

 

Now, I’m sure you know the feeling of suddenly falling sick during what had been an otherwise ordinary week, especially before something that you particularly looked forward to, or perhaps were anticipating in quiet dread. During these times, just as you desperately hope and wish to get better as quickly as possible, you feel yourself getting worse. Every cough feels like it is stealing your last breath; every sneeze feels like it is taking the entirety of your internal organs with it. Fevers feel higher, hearts colder, and the air itself seems to collapse around you, doing its best to smother you with full malicious intent. Of course, all of this is merely the exaggeration of a fractured perspective resulting from the combination of your anxieties, and you are really not as hot or fragile or as close to death as you think you are. 

 

I wish I could say that the symptoms Hera was experiencing were merely the result of her brain overthinking the situation and projecting unpleasant manifestations of what she subconsciously thought ought to be happening.

 

What Hera didn’t know was that if Minkowski genuinely had been in the room with her and attempted that exact maneuver, her hand would most likely have been melted into terrible disfigurement. The heat she was feeling was indeed genuine, and had she been anyone but herself, she would not have survived it. Then again, if Hera had been anyone but herself, she would not have been feeling that level of heat after all, unless of course some wicked person had thought it in their best interest to set the room she was in on fire. 

 

The pain was excruciating. Her head felt like all the different parts of her brain were grinding against each other at a pace she didn’t yet have the vocabulary to describe. The image of the room hovering in her mind seemed to change colors-- first red; then green, tinged with yellow; then blue, and purple, and so on through the rainbow-- then, with a jolt, her spine stiffened, and a gasp fell out of her mouth, and all of a sudden she was standing in the middle of a colorless, faded room. A closer look gave away that it was the same room she had just been in-- only, now, it looked...younger. The walls may have been painted with the same drab shade of grey, but the coats looked like they had been recently redone, and there were no peels to be found at any point along their lengths. The floor, too, was shiny and new, without any of the characteristic burn marks that had long scorched their way into Hera’s memory. Even her chair was gone, and the room was instead filled with a large steel contraption that stirred something at the base of Hera’s chest, although she couldn’t quite place the strong feeling of familiarity that washed over her as her eyes scanned its length. 

 

It’s not as if she couldn’t remember anything that had happened to her in this room, she mused as she circled the machine, one of her hands trailing lightly over the cool metal. There were plenty of momentous events, both happy and...less savory, that she could recall having this place as the setting. But  _ this _ particular piece of machinery… it was long, and large, and although she’d had plenty of experience with similar things, there was an ominous edge to this metal monstrosity that didn’t ring any bells. The section she was touching was part of a tall, solid cylinder ( _ technically, a hexagonal prism _ ) whose smooth surface gave no indication as to the undoubtedly numberless parts working in tandem inside. The cylinder was then connected to a series of pipes and hanging grips and clamps, which themselves terminated in a large, bowl-like seat. Perhaps most interestingly, as she continued to circle the machine to its front, she noticed a smaller, similar bowl folded up and away into the upper recesses of the thing.  _ I’d definitely remember using something like this _ . Until now, she’d assumed this was just a particularly vivid memory, but the more closely she examined the details, the less sure she was. Either she was remembering incorrectly, or something much more sinister was going on here. 

 

A clipping sound echoed from beyond the door, and Hera’s ear twitched, her body automatically half-twisting in self-defense the way Renee had taught her. It took a moment or two longer than it had used to, but after two or three more “bars” of the unsettling beat, she recognized the sound as footfalls-- and, more importantly,  _ whose _ footfalls. In the two seconds it took for her body to sprint into action, throwing herself behind the nearest row of filing cabinets, all empty and dusty and freezing cold against her skin, her heartrate skyrocketed, and she could feel its pounding in her throat as she huddled against the cabinets’ sharp edges.

 

The door handle began to slowly turn in its place, and she silently cursed herself for holding her breath--  _ really? After all this time, Hera? _ Every fraction of a circle it swung through seemed to hammer another nail into her rapidly shrinking coffin, and each accompanying squeak of the bronze felt like it was taking another five years off of her life. As it caught at the height of its rise, her breath caught with it. She could make out muffled voices on the other side of the thick metal, and even without the acoustics of the room to emphasize the scornful sibilances unique to this particular person, she knew who at least one of them belonged to. She pressed herself a little flatter flush to the cabinets. The door began to squeak louder, as if someone was leaning against it while holding it just barely closed. 

 

Later, Hera would look back on this experience while recounting it to her siblings and comment that, in that moment, she had felt the closest to her age that she had for a very long time. 

 

In the moment, however, she was too busy trying to keep her breath calm enough to allow her to remain undetected. Sometimes when you or I are scared, we might entertain fanciful notions that at other times we would never allow to cross our mind in good faith, such as closet monsters and standardized tests. In much the same way, Hera’s brain was working overtime, running through all scenarios, plausible or not, as to who-- or  _ what _ \-- might be with the person she’d already identified. She chanced a glance to the side--

 

The door swung open fully. Quickly, she retreated, listening to what she could now confirm were two sets of footsteps enter the room. The voice she recognized spoke:

 

“Chair. Now.”

 

Some dutiful footsteps. A noise of surprise.

 

The voice again, noticeably irritated: 

“Yes, we haven’t used this before. Don’t waste my time dawdling.”

 

Hera couldn’t see the second person being strapped in, but she could hear every rip of velcro, every metal  _ shh-ck _ of buckles, every single looping groan of belts and cords being pulled and fastened. She had no doubt that whoever it was was well and truly trussed as a Thanksgiving turkey, as the expression went, not that she’d ever seen a Thanksgiving turkey.

 

The voice snapped again. 

 

“Close your eyes.” 

 

A pause.

 

“ _ Now. _ ”

 

Hera heard some shuffling, but no further protest from either the voice or the other, mysteriously silent person. 

 

What Hera wasn’t able to see from her crowded, chilly vantage point behind the filing cabinets is that up until this point, the person in the machine had been  _ unable _ to speak. Now, safe and… compliant in the machine, they opened their mouth, about to speak, after which they would have been  _ instantly _ recognized by Hera. Unfortunately for her, and for the poor soul who she would never be able to save from the fate that somewhere, deep down, she knew they would face, at that very moment, right as the first syllable began to exit their mouth, the lines of the room began to blur around her. Something burning with the icy fires of hell fisted itself around her heart, and she gasped for breath, forgetting, for a moment, that she was supposed to be hiding. As her vision once again began to fade away and the splitting headache she’d already forgotten about returned, she rocked back and forth in place, eyes once again shut tight to try and brace against the pain. Everything went dark.

 

And then she woke up. 

 

Not, disappointingly, safe and sound in her bed, like she would have if this was a happy story with a pleasant ending. No, she was back in the chair she had been waiting in, once again in the same room, but back in the present. Her eyes were open, she realized, as she blinked away foggy flashes of a machine that had once been. She tried to move her arm. Her grip easily released from the chair’s seat. She attempted to stand up. Although she was wobbly, she managed to steady herself against the back of the chair. She blinked again, and again, and again and again, trying to reconcile her sense of balance as the room continued to swim around her.

 

The room began to settle, and the back of her neck began to prickle, as if it was sensing something in the vicinity, something she could not see, something she had been insensible to this entire time.

 

When the voice came, it sliced through the air, sharp as a scimitar, cold and unforgiving as November rain.

 

“Hello, 214.”


End file.
